Heart of Darkness: A Signature Performance by Kenneth Branagh

"Treasure Island" is an adventure novel by Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson, narrating a tale of "buccaneers and buried gold". Its influence is enormous on popular perceptions of pirates, including such elements as treasure maps marked with an "X", schooners, the Black Spot, tropical islands, and one-legged seamen bearing parrots on their shoulders. "Treasure Island" is traditionally considered a coming-of-age story and is noted for its atmosphere, characters, and action. It is one of the most frequently dramatized of all novels.

In a rundown farmhouse near isolated, rural Dunwich, a bizarre family conjures and nurtures an evil entity from another realm, with the purpose of destroying the world and delivering it to ancient gods to rule, and only an aged university librarian can stop them.

Set against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots of 1780, "Barnaby Rudge" is a story of mystery and suspense which begins with an unsolved double murder and goes on to involve conspiracy, blackmail, abduction and retribution. Through the course of the novel fathers and sons become opposed, apprentices plot against their masters and Protestants clash with Catholics on the streets. And, as London erupts into riot, Barnaby Rudge himself struggles to escape the curse of his own past.

'The longest and most charming love letter in literature', playfully constructs the figure of Orlando as the fictional embodiment of Woolf's close friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West. Spanning three centuries, the novel opens as Orlando, a young nobleman in Elizabeth's England, awaits a visit from the Queen and traces his experience with first love as England under James I lies locked in the embrace of the Great Frost. At the midpoint of the novel, Orlando, now an ambassador in Costantinople, awakes to find that he is a woman, and the novel indulges in farce and irony to consider the roles of women in the 18th and 19th centuries.

"Bleak House" is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 20 monthly installments between March 1852 and September 1853. It is held to be one of Dickens's finest novels, containing one of the most vast, complex and engaging arrays of minor characters and sub-plots in his entire canon. At the novel's core is long-running litigation in England's Court of Chancery, Jarndyce v Jarndyce, which has far-reaching consequences for all involved. The litigation, which already has taken many years and consumed between £60,000 and £70,000 in court costs, is emblematic of the failure of Chancery.

The complete collection of Kipling's classic tales. Includes "Mowgli's Brothers", "Hunting-Song of the Seeonee Pack", "Kaa's Hunting", "Road-Song of the Bandar-Log", "Tiger! Tiger!", "Mowgli's Song", "The White Seal", "Lukannon", "Rikki-Tikki-Tavi", "Darzee's Chant", "Toomai of the Elephants", "Shiv and the Grasshopper", "Her Majesty's Servants", and "Parade Song of the Camp Animals".

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Oz! All fourteen of L. Frank Baum's Oz books, in order and unabridged. included: "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" (1900), "The Marvelous Land of Oz" (1904), "Ozma of Oz" (1907), "Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz" (1908), "The Road to Oz" (1909), "The Emerald City of Oz" (1910), "The Patchwork Girl of Oz" (1913), "Tik-Tok of Oz" (1914), "The Scarecrow of Oz" (1915), "Rinkitink in Oz" (1916), "The Lost Princess of Oz" (1917), "The Tin Woodman of Oz" (1918), "The Magic of Oz" (1919), "Glinda of Oz" (1920).

From his many years on the high seas as a mariner, mate, and captain, Joseph Conrad created unique works, including Heart of Darkness, that have left an indelible mark on world literature. First published in 1899, his haunting novel Lord Jim is both a riveting sea adventure and a fascinating portrait of a unique outcast from civilization.

This work contains the collected short stories of H.P Lovecraft: "The Festival", "He", "Cool Air", "In the Vault", "Pickman's Model", "The Nameless City", "The Alchemist", "The Very Old Folk", "Rats in the Walls", "From Beyond", "The Hound", "The Strange High House in the Mist", "The Unnamable - Hypnos", "The Quest of Iranon", "The Temple", "The Moon Bog", "The Evil Clergyman", "The Horror at Martin's Beach", "The Silver Key", "The Transition of Juan Romero", "The Other Gods", "The Outsider".

"Children's and Household Tales" (German: "Kinder- und Hausmärchen") is a collection of German origin fairy tales first published in 1812 by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, the Brothers Grimm. The collection is commonly known today as "Grimms' Fairy Tales" (German: "Grimms Märchen").

Set amid the stifling atmosphere of nineteenth-century bourgeois France, Madame Bovary is at once an unsparing depiction of a woman’s gradual corruption and a savagely ironic study of human shallowness and stupidity. Neither Emma, nor her lovers, nor Homais, the man of science, escapes the author’s searing castigation, and it is the book’s final profound irony that only Charles, Emma’s oxlike, eternally deceived husband, emerges with a measure of human grace.

"The Lost World" is a novel released in 1912 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle about an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon basin in Brazil that encountered prehistoric animals. It has been the inspiration for subsequent fiction, including Michael Crichton's "Jurassic Park".

Leo Tolstoy's classic story of doomed love is one of the most admired novels in world literature. Generations of readers have been enthralled by his magnificent heroine, the unhappily married Anna Karenina, and her tragic affair with dashing Count Vronsky.

So begins the Time Traveller's astonishing firsthand account of his journey 800,000 years beyond his own era - and the story that launched H.G. Wells's successful career and earned him his reputation as the father of science fiction. With a speculative leap that still fires the imagination, Wells sends his brave explorer to face a future burdened with our greatest hopes... and our darkest fears.

In what may be Dickens's best novel, humble, orphaned Pip is apprenticed to the dirty work of the forge but dares to dream of becoming a gentleman - and one day, under sudden and enigmatic circumstances, he finds himself in possession of "great expectations." In this gripping tale of crime and guilt, revenge and reward, the compelling characters include Magwitch, the fearful and fearsome convict; Estella, whose beauty is excelled only by her haughtiness; and the embittered Miss Havisham, an eccentric jilted bride